Brockway McMillan (March 30, 1915 – December 3, 2016) was an American government official and scientist, who served as the eighth

Under Secretary of the Air Force The Under Secretary of the Air Force (USECAF, or SAF/US), sometimes referred to as the Under Secretary of the Department of the Air Force, is the second-highest ranking civilian official in the United States Department of the Air Force, Departmen ...

and the second

Director of the National Reconnaissance Office The Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (DNRO) of the United States is responsible to the Secretary of Defense (through the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence) and the Director of National Intelligence for all national space and ...

. McMillan was born in

Minneapolis, Minnesota Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

in 1915, the only child of Franklin Richardson McMillan, a civil engineer, and Luvena Lucille Brockway McMillan, a schoolteacher. He received his B.S. in 1936 and a Ph.D. 1939 from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) on a thesis entitled ''The calculus of discrete homogenous chaos'' supervised by

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher i ...

. He also served in the U.S. Navy at Dahlgren and Los Alamos during World War II. He joined

Bell Telephone Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...

1946 as a research mathematician and published the article "The Basic Theorems of Information Theory" and proved parts of Kraft's inequality, sometimes called the Kraft-McMillan theorem (Kraft proved that if the inequality is satisfied, then a prefix code exists with the given lengths. McMillan showed that unique decodeability implies that the inequality holds.) McMillan served as the President of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

(SIAM) 1959-1960. McMillan became assistant director of systems engineering in 1955 and was named director of military research in 1959. From 1961 to 1965 he was with the U.S. Air Force as assistant secretary for research and development and then undersecretary of the Air Force. He rejoined Bell Labs in 1965 and retired in 1979 as vice-president for military development. He was an

IEEE Fellow As of 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has 5,082 members designated Fellow, each of whom is associated with one of the 41 societies under the IEEE. The Fellow grade of membership is the highest level of membershi ...

, past president of SIAM, and member of several mathematical organizations. McMillan promoted the development of a second generation of reconnaissance satellites: the

KH-5 Argon KH-5 ARGON was a series of reconnaissance satellites produced by the United States from February 1961 to August 1964. The KH-5 operated similarly to the CORONA series of satellites, as it ejected a canister of photographic film. At least 12 ...

(produced 1961–65) satellite mapping system, and

KH-6 Lanyard BYEMAN codenamed LANYARD, the KH-6 was the unsuccessful first attempt to develop and deploy a very high-resolution optical reconnaissance satellite by the United States National Reconnaissance Office. Launches and launch attempts spanned the per ...

(in use 1963), the first attempt to acquire higher resolutions imagery. He advocated maintaining the

National Reconnaissance Office The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. f ...

as the primary United States agency in space reconnaissance. In 1942, while at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, McMillan married Elizabeth Audrey Wishard (1915–2008) who had a PhD in mathematics from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

in Cambridge, Boston, in 1938. He died on December 3, 2016 at his home in Sedgwick, Maine at the age of 101.The Ellsworth American - Brockway McMillan
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McMillan, Brockway 1915 births 2016 deaths American centenarians Men centenarians Directors of the National Reconnaissance Office Fellow Members of the IEEE American information theorists Manhattan Project people Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Presidents of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Scientists at Bell Labs United States Navy personnel of World War II Kennedy administration personnel Lyndon B. Johnson administration personnel

See also

References